1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of providing a virtual product to third parties, and here it relates, in particular, to a method wherein the virtual product is present in a digital form and further includes additional information indicating which rights a third party having received the virtual product has acquired in relation to same. In addition, the present invention relates to a computer program having a program code for performing the method of providing a virtual product to third parties.
2. Description of Prior Art
The term “virtual product” describes intellectual property, such as music, a novel, a picture, a film, a program or the like, which may be represented in a digital form, typically as a file. Files under consideration are, for example, an MP3 file, a PDF file, an AVI file, an EXE file, and the like.
The production and distribution of a virtual product, such as multimedia, are expensive. The production and distribution are organized by a content provider. The latter bears the economic risk for the goods (virtual product). This is the model on which, e.g., the global music industry is based. The same applies to software distribution. Non-legalized copies or pirate copies of multimedia products and software products as well as their non-licensed passing-on undermine this economic model. In the case of the music industry, there is the question whether it will be possible, in the future, for production to carry on existing at all, when nobody will be able to pay authors, composers and performers anymore, since their products will no longer have any market value.
As a counter-measure, the software and music industries are trying, for example, to limit the uncontrolled circulation of their products. The software and music industries are faced with a dilemma, however: on the one hand, they want to hand out the product to legal buyers, i.e. to transfer the product to the users' devices and thus to pass them on to the user's range of influence. There, however, they are only supposed to be of limited availability to the users' desire to use them. However, it is not the content providers that possess the instruments of power for implementing this limitation, but only their users. However, masses of users renounce to being limited in that way—they rather simply carry on spreading the products purchased. The music industry, for example, reacts to this by presenting a security concept obliging the users to utilize players wherein the use of the products is checked upon in the user's device. The product purchased by the user (content stream) has the specification of so-called IPMP elements contained therein (IPMP=Intellectual Property Rights Management and Protection). It is only these IPMP elements that make it possible at all to be able to play the product acquired on a terminal device. The problem associated with this is that every product contains the elements of its decryption, so that the limitations of the IPMP elements may be lifted by suitable reprogramming. This reprogramming may be performed, for example, by a simple personal computer. The industry standards rely on a large number of customers, the number being significant in terms of the economy, to comply with the functionality of the standardized IPMP devices.
The principle of the common models of rights, e.g. IPMP, provides for an element installed in the terminal device to control the use of a product acquired in the terminal device at the user's end. In particular, it prevents uncontrolled passing-on. Here, the individual user's interest is not met. On the contrary, the user is restricted in his/her freedom. Rather, the user is called upon to undermine, by means of his/her device, the distributor's interest, i.e. the prevention of the uncontrolled spreading of the products.
Thus, this model infringes upon a fundamental principle of open security requirements, i.e. that which states that in an open world of communication partners not subject to any central control, those that pursue an interest must also have the means to push through this interest. This is done, e.g., in exchanging signed declarations of intention, acknowledgements and agreements. Those who have an interest in a promise of their communication partner being met, possess, in the form of the partner's signature, a piece of evidence which cannot be disputed by the partner and with which they may enforce the promise being met, if need be before court.
With the IPMP approach, the contrary applies. Those who have an interest in restricting the use of their products hand out the means for enforcing their interests to a communication partner who will be restricted in his interests by these very means.
This provides an explanation for the big success of Internet exchanges, such as Napster and subsequent file-sharing models.
Thus, there is a need to regain a sound basis for the security model for multimedia rights, especially on the Internet.
An approach is to associate any self-limiting good behavior of users with advantages for them which are more enticing than any behavior deviating therefrom. These advantages could be, for example, discounts, the possibility of returning products, or quality warrantees.
More effective than these incentives, however, is the reversal of the above-mentioned nature of the interests involved, i.e. to the effect that the spreading of multimedia products, which spreading is obviously in the users' interest, may also be recognized by the distributors as being in their own interest, and, accordingly, is not inhibited, but, on the contrary, promoted. The content providers' interest must be for the clients (users) to spread the products as much and as widely as possible, which is not at all bizarre, since the distributor of products anyhow is interested in the products being widely circulated. Of course, a fundamental interest of the distributor is that the product distributed should be paid for.
To achieve this, users are made sales partners of the content providers, i.e. they are made nodal points of sales. Users who pay for and circulate a multimedia product or software or similar virtual product are given a commission out of the purchase price that the receiver pays for the product obtained. If the receiver pays no purchase price, the sender will not receive any commission, in which case the receiver, in his/her turn, will also never be entitled to receive a commission fee. In order to enable the above-described approach, the virtual product must be labeled so as to associate the potentially acquired rights to the virtual product.
An example of the above-mentioned labeling of virtual products has been described, for example, in DE 102 17 862 A, which discloses a method of labeling a virtual product as it is passed on to third parties. The virtual product is present in a digital form, and the labeling indicates which rights a third party having received the virtual product has acquired in relation to the virtual product. In accordance with this method, the virtual product is provided by a distributor, and electronic documentation is created for the virtual product provided and is associated with the virtual product which is present in the form of a file. After the file has been passed on to a third party, if the third party wants to acquire any rights to the virtual product, the necessary transaction for acquiring the desired right is initially performed. Upon completion of the transaction, an electronic acknowledgement is produced and associated with the file having the associated electronic documentation. The acknowledgment has information about the rights the third party has acquired by means of the transaction stored therein.
The method described in DE 102 17 862 A is advantageous in that the buyer of a product is now encouraged to further spread the virtual product he/she has legally acquired, since he/she is now entitled to a commission in the event that a receiver buys this product.
However, a disadvantage is that the virtual product is always sent on to third parties in the original format, i.e. in the original version, so that these third parties will always hold a full version of the virtual product in their hands, irrespective of whether the rights to this product have been acquired or not. Thus, the reward for the first buyer who has passed on the product solely depends on the good will of the receiver who even—though he/she already holds in his/her hand a full version—must effect the purchase of same.